


each time almost remembering something that got lost

by shellsinsand



Series: the consequences of light [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon has been taken out back and shot, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:24:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellsinsand/pseuds/shellsinsand
Summary: Team Minato owes Fate a debt; she collects.





	1. Nohara Rin

**Author's Note:**

> the monster that started it all. this is entirely solongsoldier's fault - they know what they did.

Rin’s two day rotation at the academy is a relief, for all that it’s a sign of the impending storm. It’s one of her preferred assignments – patching up kunai nicks and helping out with chakra control lessons – and she can smell Sensei all over it, even if the man himself isn’t here to grin at her about it. _You have to take care of yourself_ , he would say, _you’re no good to anyone exhausted_. While he might be right, nearly three months grounded in Konoha is as much rest as any able-bodied shinobi is getting right now, and whatever Sensei had promised the Hokage to keep their team in village – judging by the man’s absence in Konoha since the incident, it was likely himself – it was running out. The whispers are mounting, and for all the good Rin is doing at the hospital, even the children know they need field medics more than they need doctors. War is like that. All she could hope for is that they’d rotate her onto a different team rather than pulling Obito from the police force. 

She’s halfheartedly working her way through her bento – really nothing more than rice and the sad remains of vegetables in the fridge – and keeping an eye on the impending six year old drama when she spots the runner. More accurately, the cloud of dust kicked up in their wake. 

“Aiko,” she calls, “go fetch Shiro-sensei.” The little girl looks up from her friends, and nods, jogging into the academy. Rin puts the lid back on her bento, sliding it into her bag. You would think, three weeks into this, her heart would have learned to stay in its place rather than dropping to the pit of her stomach at every commotion. She’s not sure whether to pray that they’ve found him or that they just need her in the ER. Realistically, they’re not likely to be the same request. Shiro and Aiko come back outside just as the runner’s skidding to a stop, breathing hard. The children pause, frozen in the way kids get when they’re not sure if something really hurts yet. 

“Nohara Rin?” the man – a boy really, younger than her – asks. 

“Yes,” she says, and hands him her water bottle. He takes it gratefully, but doesn’t drink. 

“They need you at the hospital,” he says, “a patrol just came back.” She looks at him carefully, just for a moment, but there’s no pity there. If she knows anyone on it, he’s not aware of it. There’s a pain in her chest – hope or despair – but she’s already running too fast to tell. 

Before the war, Rin would have said she knew Konoha’s twists and turns like an old friend. She’s always enjoyed walking, and her mother said she had her father’s wandering feet. (Thankfully, she hadn’t inherited his sense of direction.) Now, she thinks she could run the rooftops blind while detailing how to stitch intestines back together and still get to the hospital without a stumble. She wishes it were something she could be proud of rather than a sad necessity. 

“Where?” she yells over the general din of intake, as she flies through the doors. Haru’s manning the desk, and barely looks up from the family of three in front of her. 

“OR 5,” she shouts back. Rin doesn’t pause to thank her. There’s a still a pair of clean scrubs in her locker, and she nearly brains herself trying to tug on her pants and shirt at the same time. OR 5 is in the back, and she half jogs down the hallway, mentally taking stock of her chakra stores. The two days “off” have done wonders, but if more than one person’s critical, she’s in for a soldier pill hangover tomorrow. It’s…

She freezes; Minato’s standing in the hallway, clearly not hearing a word of whatever the jounin standing in front of him is saying to him. Her heart thumps in her chest. He’s lost weight, and there’s a smear of blood across his vest, like he was carrying someone. She must make some kind of sound – what she couldn’t begin to guess – because his head whips up to look at her. It’s like she’s underwater suddenly, blood pounding in her ears, and he doesn’t have to say anything for her to know who’s in that operating room. 

“Rin…” he starts – but then Mizuki-sama is striding down the hallway. 

“Nohara!” she barks, and Rin jolts, moving forward to follow her on rote. She scrubs in on automatic, digging the soap beneath her nails and pulling her mask on. Through the doors, she can hear the other nurses already moving, prepping…

“Rin,” Mizuki-sama says, and this time her eyes are gentle over her mask. “You’re here because he’s critical, and I need someone who’s familiar with his baseline. We’re also hoping a known presence will help keep him calm – you know how sensors are. Can you do this?” 

She takes a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut, and holds it until she can feel the air pulsing against her chest – alive, alive, alive – then she lets it all out in a rush. Can has nothing to do with it. We do what we must, her mother whispers somewhere in the past. She opens her eyes. “Yes,” she says, “I’m ready.” 

Operating rooms always smell of blood and antiseptic, so Rin knows her brain’s inserting the smell of lightning and grass simply because she knows who’s lying on the table. It’s nothing more than a stress response to the event she’d both been praying for and dreading in equal measure. Because lying there, as Mizuki asks for a status and the lead nurse rattles off a vital signs and a list of cataloged injuries, is a shock of silver hair Rin would know anywhere, even with some of it torn out and the other half soaked in blood. Kakashi – three weeks late and half given up for dead – has finally made it home; now all they have to do is save him. 

\--

Rin’s grandmother – a healer before Tsunade-sama was born – taught her about the Mystical Palm technique long before the academy tried to. It was hardly the first ninjutsu she’d ever seen, but watching the gash on Mr. Ryuu’s leg disappear under her grandmother’s hands was the first time it seemed like magic. She’d decided then and there, all of five years old, that she was going to be a ninja so one day she could do it too. Looking back, she’s not sure her parents had ever truly forgiven her grandmother for it, even if they’d understood. Now – elbow deep in her friend’s blood – she thinks it’s amazing that they understood at all. There’s a sudden flare…

“Get back!” she snaps, jerking her own hands off of Kakashi’s temple, and blinking at the harsh lights of the surgery. Electricity crackles up Kakashi’s left arm, frying the heart rate monitor. The machine flat lines, and starts shrieking. 

“Damn it,” Mizuki says, “someone get a suppression seal.” 

“Doctor,” one of the nurses says, looking at the bank of monitors, and then shining a pen light in Kakashi’s eye, “he’s hemorrhaging again.” Kakashi, accepting his cue, groans weakly, fingers twitching at his restraints. 

“ _Fuck_. Nohara.” But Rin’s already reaching out again, closing her eyes. Kakashi’s entire chakra network feels like it’s on fire – grey and roiling – pulling at her feelers, desperate to make up for what his body’s lost. 

“It’s his prefrontal cortex again, left.” 

“Pressure’s spiking.”

“Get that seal on him.” 

Mizuki’s chakra hits Kakashi’s network like a balm, and Rin can picture the cells repairing, dividing. A moment later, one of the nurses applies the suppression seal, and everything goes slow, sticky almost; it must be one of the ones altered for medical use - Kushina’s work maybe. It was definitely Uzumaki. 

“Pressure’s back down.”

“Pupil response is improving.”

“We’ve got renewed bleeding from the abdominal laceration.”

“Rako, check his lungs.” 

Rin’s always been bad at keeping track of time during operations and chakra monitoring just adds to the difficulty. She’s no Hyūga – though some days she’d give her left arm to be – so it’s all by feel, sending out hundreds of her own chakra pulses and waiting to see what she gets back. It’d taken her years (and the patience of more than a few Hyūga) to figure out how to interpret any of it. In the end, the minutiae are so dependent on the patient she needs a baseline to do any kind of detail work. Back before the war, when they could afford to have specialties, everyone had been so baffled that she’d chosen this. It’s fiddley work – as much an art as a science – but Rin had liked that about it: the challenge of putting back together the thing that made shinobi what they are. Now, she’s just grateful it put her in this room, even if it feels like the surgery has gone on forever. There’s a rhythm to it almost, Mizuki’s chakra flaring green in Rin’s mind everywhere she works and Kakashi’s chakra slowly sweeping it away as she moves on. Eventually, she realizes Kakashi’s chakra has lost most of its turbulence, and the green stops coming. 

“Status, Nohara.” Rin breathes, tugging methodically at the web of her chakra spread out over Kakashi’s own. It’s greyer than she would like, not nearly back to the sharp white he’d inherited from his father, and… echoes, if that’s even the right word, more than normal. Or maybe she’s just more tired than she thought. The stubborn whirlpools over his stomach and leg are easy enough to pick out though, as well as his Gate. When she tugs again, she doesn’t hear the echo. 

“Tenketsu in the lower right abdomen and upper left leg are flared, though suppression makes it hard to say if that’s from us or from the patient. Gate of Opening is cracked, but that’s normal from what I’ve read about this level of trauma.” She pulls her hands back, squinting to try to bring her eyes into focus. “Overall, he’s got a moderate case of chakra exhaustion, but he’s stable for now.” Mizuki nods at her, eyes crinkling above her mask. 

“You’re correct, on all counts. Good work everyone. Let’s get him transferred to the ICU.” The room breaks into activity again, and Rin groans as she unfolds herself from her chair. The clock says it’s been five hours – and her back can certainly confirm it. They get Kakashi transferred onto a fresh bed without incident, and a pair of orderlies come to take him to the ICU. Rin scrubs down slowly, trying to work the stiffness out of her hands, and attempting not to think about the fact that she’s due for another shift in twelve hours. Maybe she should just sleep in the breakroom, that’d let her check in on Kakashi. Although Mizuki-sama wants to keep him sedated until she’s certain he’s not about to start hemorrhaging again. Yawning, she shoulders her way out of the OR, and barely makes it two steps before running into someone, bloody scrubs and all. 

“Oh, sorry. God, I’m a walking biohazard – I’m so sorry, sir, but you’re going to have to come with me. You shouldn’t –“

“Rin.” Oh, well, that explains what a civilian is doing back here. 

“Hi, Sensei.” She squints at his black shirt for a minute, thrown off, before looking up at him. His hair looks like it’s been washed – sticking up and drying unevenly – but he’s drawn, jaw locked like he’s bracing for something. “Oh!” She reaches out to touch his shoulder. “Sensei, he’s fine,” and their teacher deflates like a balloon that’s been popped. Suddenly, Rin’s knees aren’t feeling particularly stable either. “I’m going to sit,” she says, and takes the two steps to the other side of the hall before slumping down against that wall. Kakashi’s _fine_. _Kakashi’s_ fine. Well, not really, but he was _stable_ and the rest was a problem for tomorrow. Oh God, had anyone even told Obito? Was the air really thin right here?

“Rin, are you alright?” Sensei’s crouched down in front of her, already looking ten years younger. Kushina’s right – he really does look like a sunbeam sometimes. She flaps a hand at him, and he smiles, catching it in his own. 

“I’m having a delayed stress reaction,” she says, forcing herself to hold each of her inhales for at least four heartbeats. “What _happened_? Shinobi just don’t come home after three weeks. Where have you been? We needed…” She swallows hard, trying to focus on the warmth of his palm and the fact that everyone on her stupid, awful team was alive and here and _alive_. “I think I’ve been running on worry, a little bit,” she says, but it sounds distant. Her limbs seem lighter, which would be great except that it feels like her head is going to fall off. Sensei sits down cross-legged in front of her, sliding his fingers around her wrist, checking her pulse; it’s elevated, hammering against his hand. If she passes out she swears she’s locking all of her boys in a cave and going on vacation, desertion be damned. (She’s never leaving any of them ever again). There were probably never going to be answers to half her questions – at least not for her. Fucking war. She inhales… she exhales. Minato hums, softly, to himself. He’d only started doing that since the War. He’s tanner than the last time she saw him and he’s holding his shoulder like it’s wrapped – probably a strain. She channels a bit of chakra into his palm and feels the same bottomless blue echoing back that she always does. He tightens his grip slightly in warning. 

“I’m fine,” he says, and she rolls her eyes a little. She was having a moment, he didn’t have to call her on it. 

“You always say that. It is your shoulder, though, isn’t it – bicep tendon?” He taps her wrist, shaking his head.

“I’m not enabling you.” 

“I’ll just check your chart.”

“Kushina wrapped it.” He holds up his free hand to stall her before she can start in on why everyone should stop _ignoring the hospital_. “I’m _fine_ ,” he repeats, ducking a little to force her to meet his eyes. They’re the kind of blue she’s afraid of forgetting, every time he goes and does something stupid and brave. (She worries about forgetting Kakashi’s pout, Obito’s laugh, the color of her aunt’s hair when the sun hits it.) 

“Okay,” she says, voice small. She’s not, _not_ going to cry about this – not him nor Kakashi. Who is _home_ , oh kami, for all that he had absurd diffuse brain trauma. What if he doesn’t even remember them? She shuts her eyes and tries to empty her mind the way they’d taught them at the academy. Her pulse is racing and she just wants this all to stop. She breathes. Kakashi is alive. The world has not caved in. Sensei still hasn’t let go. They’ll know more tomorrow. She opens her eyes. “Does Obito know?” Sensei winces, scratching at the back of his neck. 

“I didn’t want to…” _get his hopes up_ , Rin thinks, and feels dirty just for contemplating it. She nods. 

“Yeah, that’s. Yeah. We need to find him.” Sensei nods, and lets go of her hand, pushing himself up off the floor. She laughs, just a little.

“Rin?”

“It’s just,” she snorts, grinning up at him, “I don’t think I can stand up just now. I used a lot more chakra than I realized.” It happens sometimes, when patients are familiar with her chakra. Their body gets used to it, comes to accept it as its own. Normally, it means it’s less draining for her to heal them. It makes sustained monitoring difficult though, when their body keeps draining her feelers. Suddenly, Kakashi’s ability to gather enough chakra to fry their electronics twice makes a lot more sense; she’d been too tense to even notice. Whoops. 

Minato laughs, bright and familiar and harder than the situation probably deserves. “Maybe I should leave you here, modern medicine and all.”

“Don’t you dare,” she says, and he shakes his head, reaching down. Maybe if it had been anyone but him, getting a piggyback out of the hospital would have been embarrassing. As is, she presses her face into his back and yawns. She can feel the steady drum of his heart through his shirt, and she’s no sensor but he’s leaking chakra enough that it doesn’t matter. It’s like being wrapped in her favorite blanket – warm and secure. It’s a good place to breathe. 

“I wouldn’t leave you,” he says, and what do you know, turns out it’s a good place to nap too. 

\--

Rin wakes up all at once. It’s been two hours – probably closer to three – and someone had managed to get her out of her scrubs and drape a blanket over her without waking her up. She’s either in the guest room at Minato’s apartment or Obito’s house then – there’s no way her dad could avoid fussing for this long. Given the pervading smell of dinner, she’s wagering on Obito’s house. Sensei, bless him, could not cook anything more complicated than an egg. She’s trying to decide if food or sleep is more appealing when there’s a yelp outside her door – definitely Obito – followed by a thud. 

“Are you alright, Obito-kun?” she asks, prying her eyes open; looks like it’s going to be dinner. There’s a guilty sounding silence from outside. She yawns, pushing herself up, and smiles at the familiar photo of Obito’s family on the bedside table. It’s the only photo of Obito she’s ever seen where he looks like a proper Uchiha. (“Unnerving, isn’t it?” Obito’s mom said, the first time Rin had seen it. A storm had knocked a tree through part of the roof, and half the upstairs had needed to be cleared out. The older women had smiled and shook her head. “He gets that from his father’s side – smiling faces, every last one of them.”) “Obito?”

“One minute!” he says. Rin lets herself flop back onto the mattress, rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her palms. _Kakashi came back alive_. She lets herself laugh, swept up in relief. What a ridiculous, impossible boy. The bridge mission had scarred each of them, but they’d found some kind of rhythm in the months after. It had been like weathering a sandstorm: emerging into the light to find the whole landscape had shifted around you with only your companions as witness. Rin hadn’t asked what had happened, when she’d been in the cave, but there had been a moment facing the Iwa-nin where they’d all just _meshed_ , easier than breathing. She, maybe selfishly, wants that back, wants her team back. 

The sound of Obito’s footsteps jerk her out of her thoughts, and she sits back up as he slides open the door. He’s wearing loose pants and a plain blue t-shirt, hair still damp. There’s an edge of thoughtlessness to his movements, leaving them slightly jerky, that she hadn’t noticed was missing until now; they’d all been carrying their worry in different ways. For a moment, they just grin helplessly at each other, and then Obito flops down on the bed by her feet. She wiggles her toes against his side just to hear him squeak (manfully.) He grabs her feet and looks up at her woefully. 

“You talked with Sensei?” she says. His face sobers, and he nods. 

“Yeah. He said it was bad?”

“He’s stable. They’re going to keep him sedated for now.” She looks down at her hands. “He’s mostly likely going to have some memory loss. I’d guess short term, but we can’t be sure until he wakes up… He kept fighting – drained enough of my chakra to fry our equipment twice.” Obito snorts.

“Well, it’s definitely not an imposter then.” She kicks at him with her foot halfheartedly, but it is exactly like Kakashi. Obito smiles like he knows what she’s thinking. Just for that, she shoves him hard enough he wobbles on the edge of the bed. There’s a moment she can see him waffling on whether or not to pick up the gauntlet she’s thrown, and an equally clear moment where he remembers his mom is home and he’s losing no matter the outcome of their hypothetical wrestling match. Rin doesn’t even try not to look smug. “Cheater,” he mutters, but settles onto his back. 

“Ninja,” she says. “Did Sensei leave?”

“He said he had to report to the tower, and that he was going back to the hospital afterward.” 

“You didn’t go with him?” That’s honestly the second most baffling thing about the day. Rin spent five hours drenched in the blood and chakra and sweat proving Kakashi was still alive, and she still doesn’t trust it. The fact that Obito hadn’t run out the minute Sensei had told him was maybe more maturity than Rin was prepared to deal with from him. 

“No,” Obito says, breezy. “They’re keeping him sedated, I’ll go tomorrow.” She squints down at him, and he makes it about ten seconds before flushing, all that Uchiha pale turning redder than a tomato. “What?” he snaps.

“What’d you do?”

“Nothing!” She snorts and nudges him. It’s one of Obito’s more endearing qualities, how bad he is at lying to the people he loves. “Itriedtogobutmymomwouldn’tletme.” Rin takes a moment to parse his rushed confession into actual words, and then laughs. “She’s _fast_ ,” he whines, reaching up to rub at his ear, “and her fingers are like vices. She said I couldn’t leave while my guest was sleeping but – no offense – Sensei brought you and it’s not like you don’t already know my family. It’s not like you had to be _my_ guest. And I totally could have been back before you woke up – “ Rin laughs at that – Obito may have gotten to the hospital quickly, but coming back would have been a disaster for sure. He glares at her, still red. “ _Anyway_ , you could have just been a guest!” He deflates, looking up at the ceiling, and his fingers curl against the blankets. “I… I just want him to be home. I’m a shinobi. I know we don’t live long lives, but…” Rin swallows, carefully not mentioning the tears disappearing into his hairline. 

“Not knowing was worse,” she says, turning so she can lie down next to him. Their shoulders press together every time she breathes. “We couldn’t go forward and we couldn’t go back. I didn’t want to give up but it was so heavy.” He makes a choked sound, and she grabs his hand before he can get up or roll away. “But he’s back and he’s alive. Kakashi is alive, Obito. We’ll figure out everything else.” She sniffs, willing away the sting in her own eyes, and feeling the trembling in Obito’s shoulders. “I’m going to keep fixing you two idiots until I give up and murder you myself. So just keep that in mind.” 

They lie there for a long time, until their palms go sweaty and the shake in Obito’s shoulders stops. There’s a stain in the corner of the ceiling, and Rin wonders if Obito was the cause of it. All of their lives are so fragile – yet they imprint them so firmly on their surroundings. There’s a dent in one of the hallways of Rin’s house that her mom refuses to fix; it’d come one summer evening, when she had escaped from the bath and her father had chased her around the house. Her mom says it makes her smile every time she sees it. There would have been no one to miss the marks Kakashi left on his family’s home, but she would feel all the empty spaces he left: the corner of Sensei’s kitchen counter, the far right stool of the ramen stand. She wants to have more of Kakashi – of all of them – on the eventual day when she is forced to miss them. If this stupid war takes that from her she thinks she might burn up from the anger at it all. 

“You know,” Obito says eventually, letting go of her hand to rub at his eyes. “I was supposed to come up here to tell you there was food in the kitchen.” He turns to grin at her sheepishly, and she smiles back. 

“Got lost on the road of life?” she says, and there’s the laugh she knows and loves. “I could definitely eat though. We can swing by the hospital afterward - I’ll protect you from your mom.”

“Laugh it up,” he says, but when he rolls off the bed, he comes back to offer her a hand up. 

\--

The next two days go by in a blur. Rin works two twelve hours shifts in the ER and tries to at least sit in on one of Kakashi twice daily healing sessions. Medical ninjutsu is phenomenal in an emergency, but pumping that much chakra into an already fragile system is a delicate process. Frankly, most medical professionals don’t have the control required to avoid chakra induced cell death in the surrounding tissue when performing large procedures so they get broken up into smaller ones. She tries to explain this concept to Obito so many times she begins to wonder if she’s hallucinating the conversation. After the second time they attempt to take Kakashi off the sedation and he wakes up howling and throwing punches, forcing them to put him under again, Obito growls something about this being better if they’d just fix him and Rin is just… Done. 

“It doesn’t work like that,” she hisses, glaring up at him. Stupid boys and their stupid growth spurts. “You _know_ it doesn’t and I swear I am going to throttle you if –“

“You haven’t even been here! How would you even know what they’re doing?” His eyes flash red and Rin doesn’t know when they started yelling but Kami she is going to finish it.

“I’ve been _working_ , you selfish jerk. Some of us can’t just whine at our uncle to get a free schedule.” He flinches at that, and she feels the victory of it in her stomach. “And,” she says, taking a step forward, “Kakashi is clearly not recognizing us, which means –“

“That’s enough.” There’s a hand at the back of her collar suddenly, pulling them away from each other – Minato. The disappointment in his voice is like water crashing over her head and it leaves her floundering for whatever anger she’d been holding onto a second ago. In the corner of her vision, she can see Obito’s eyes flicker, then turn black. Kami, she’s so tired. 

“Sensei…” Obito starts, but their teacher shakes his head. 

“Both of you are going home,” he says. “You can come back when you’ve slept for at least six hours.” He shakes them both gently, like they’re misbehaving puppies. Mortifyingly, it’s not an inaccurate analogy. “This is a hospital, not a training field and both of you are old enough to know that.”

“Sorry, Minato-sensei,” Rin says, and isn’t surprised to find Obito echoing her words. Sensei looks up as if for guidance, before pushing both of them towards the door. Obito falls into step with her, bumping her shoulder in apology. She pulls a face at him, but it really was a dumb argument. 

“Use your words,” she says, pulling the door open for him. He sticks his tongue out, sketching a deep bow in the middle of the doorway. 

“My deepest apologies, Rin-chan.” The back of his hair is ridiculous, sticking up every which way. 

“Oh just walk,” she says, “but I’m sorry too.” The door has almost swung shut behind them when she realizes – Kakashi’s not recognizing them. If he’s lost the memory of getting back to Konoha, maybe... “One minute,” she says to Obito, and catches the door to Kakashi’s room. “Minato-sensei,” she says, poking her head back in. 

“Rin,” he says, half standing from the chair next to Kakashi’s bed, “I was serious – go home.”

“I am,” she says, looking at Kakashi’s face, pale against the sheets. She makes herself turn away. “I just had a thought. He might not remember getting back to Konoha, and I noticed this last time that he’s pulling his chakra back in as soon as he starts to wake up. So he really might not -”

“be recognizing us,” Sensei finishes, looking thoughtful. He nods at her. “That’s a good theory; I’ll talk with the doctors.” She grins.

“Thank you. And I know, I know. Going home now.” Obito’s waiting in the hallway, and from here it’s easy to see how exhausted he is; how exhausted they all are. He looks up as the door closes. 

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, nudging him toward the front of the hospital. “Just wanted to run something by Sensei, but it’ll keep.” 

“Good.” His face splits into a yawn, and she can’t help but mirror it. “Because I really do want that nap.” She chuckles, squinting as they step into the late afternoon sunlight. Konoha is beautiful this time of day, all gentle warmth and golden colors. Let this be the upswing, she thinks to whoever’s listening and walks towards what is sure to be her mother’s dumplings and her father’s fussing, towards home.


	2. Hatake Kakashi

There’s warmth, first, then pain. Fire that rolls up over hills and the smell of rock hitting rock. Somewhere, someone is screaming. He doesn’t know the day and something in his chest is throbbing, scalding. They did this; it hurts. He can’t wake up. A snatch of a lullaby follows crushed earth, sweet and high. They keep fucking up the scents, or maybe he’s dreaming. Everything is iron. Iron and fire and ice. He pulls away from it all, finding the lights and turning them down. They flicker, but the sun comes through. A question or a memory. There’s a blackness in his head, a void he doesn’t trust. Dust then, and he’s on the floor of his father’s study. Someone’s calling his name; his heart is still screaming. Sunlight and dust. Laughter flickers behind him. Go, someone says. He’s supposed to be alone. Is he? Had they found him here? He keeps making himself smaller but the sun isn’t leaving. There’s dust motes coming down from the ceiling. Gently, he curls a hand around it. A voice. 

Kakashi blinks, and the lights come on. 

\--

He holds his breath as he fights his way to waking, but the feeling of a study on a sunny day doesn’t fade. They’d missed the dust, before, and that has a curl of hope cracking open in his chest. The lights – artificial and bright – make his head swim and his eye refuses to bring anything into focus; he closes it. His whole body is throbbing, but he forces it up anyway. There’re hands, suddenly, on his back and shoulders and his chakra’s bubbling in his palms before he can really think about it. It takes a moment for him to distinguish the rumbling in his ear as words. 

“This week has made me very fond of the days before you learned how to manipulate the nature aspect of your chakra…” a man is saying, and Kakashi loses the rest of the sentence to his own bone deep relief. He lets go of the lightning (sparks, really) in his fingers and reaches out until he hits the soft cotton of a t-shirt, curls his fingers into it. The chakra signature flares – sunlight and dust and Sensei – and Kakashi lets himself collapse forward. Wherever he is, it’s real. Sensei’s arms wrap around him, one settling against the nape of his neck: grounding. He doesn’t know how long he spends there, just breathing, listening to nothing more than the rhythm of his teacher’s voice. Some small part of him is aware that his internal clock hasn’t been this bad since he was three and that it bodes nothing good. The rest of him is too tired to care. He’s beginning to drift off again when Sensei tugs gently at his hair. “I need you to stay awake for a while longer, Kakashi, until someone can come look at you. Everyone’s getting very upset because they think that I’m hogging you. Kushina wants to have words, and I think your teammates are plotting a mutiny.” 

“Don’t remember,” he forces himself to say, breaking off to cough. Sensei hums, arms tightening slightly. 

“That’s because I was only joking when I said you had a harder head than a rock. They’ve also been keeping you sedated.” Kakashi pulls a face – no wonder he’d felt like he was swimming through lead – and Sensei laughs like he can feel it. Considering Kakashi has zero intention of moving from where he’d collapsed into his chest, he probably can. He figures his dignity is pretty well shot when it comes to Sensei and it’s not like there’s anyone else to see it. “If you stop trying to electrocute everything they would likely stop.” He swallows hard, trying to force some moisture back into his throat. Water would be nice, but he’s not willing to move to drink it. 

“I don’t…” _remember_ , not his apparent escape or his return or waking up before. He tenses his fingers and tries to remember anything at all since the Iwa nin had ambushed him and the agony started. There’s only pain and darkness. His brain renews its pounding against his skull, his breath coming in gasps that feel very far away, but there has to be _something_. Some scrap to prove this is real and he isn’t still stuck in that bunker, but his memory is a stubborn drum of gone, gone, gone. He forces his eye open and tries to push away, but Sensei – the blonde man in front of him - won’t let go. The lightning wells up under his skin, ozone and ash. His hands are shaking. The man gripping him grunts and a shock of chakra rushes down his neck… and nothing changes. He shudders, pressing back into the solid weight of Sensei’s ribcage.

“It’s not a genjustu, Kakashi. You’re safe.” He gives a ghost of a laugh, pressing his cheek to the top of Kakashi’s head. “Everyone complains, but I don’t see anyone else in here getting shocked, do you?”

“Sorry, Sensei,” he says, but it breaks into a yawn. If his sad attempts at ninjutsu are resulting in him being this exhausted, it’s going to be a long road back to fighting shape. Sensei chuckles, fingers digging into the knots in Kakashi’s neck, gently working out the tension. It makes him feel like a noodle that’s been cooked too long. He blinks, slowly, and doesn’t bother to try to bring anything back into focus. 

“Don’t be,” Sensei says, “I knew your brand of trouble before I signed up for it.”

“’ou didn’t wager on Rin,” he mumbles, hearing Sensei’s laugh and then nothing. 

\--

He’s been off the sedatives for what they tell him is thirty four hours before he starts to remember waking up previously without prompting, some errant part of his brain finally recalling what short term memory is supposed to do. It brings his ability to slide from asleep to awake in the span of a heartbeat back with it. A cold comfort, given his inability to recollect significant details of the previous three – almost four – weeks, but one that he’s hanging onto for all he’s worth. Sensei’s a constant fixture at his bedside and Rin, Obito, Kushina, and once (horrifyingly) Gai drift in and out as their schedules permit. 

He naps his way through the better part of an additional twenty hours, his dreams strange and shadowy. The shape of them lurks just out of reach and thinking too hard on it leaves him with nothing more than a migraine and the taste of iron in his mouth. 

“Then _stop_ thinking about them,” Rin says, frowning at him. “You’re still healing, Kakashi-kun, you need to be patient.” She finishes with his pulse and tips his chin up to face her. “Light,” she says, and he’s momentarily blinded. Her fingers are cool against his chin, anchoring him. “Your pupils are still responding well,” she says as he blinks spots out of his vision, “that’s a good sign that the swelling in your brain is staying down.” She hums faintly under her breath as she checks the stiches above his ear, tilting his head so she can see where they loop around to the back of his neck. 

“Bah, it’s just making room for his ego,” Obito chimes in from the other side of the room. He’s sprawled across two chairs he’s borrowed from somewhere, still pouting about Sensei making him stop tossing shuriken at the ceiling. Privately, Kakashi can empathize with the boredom, but at least Obito can go outside if he wants to; Kakashi’s nurse yelled at him for two hours last night when she found him walking to the bathroom on his own. Honestly, he’d snuck past Sensei just fine – the woman was a demon. 

“I see the academy hasn’t covered the difference between physical and abstract yet,” he says, ignoring Obito’s squawk of protest. Rin pinches his shoulder, but her lips are twitching in a way he knows means she’s trying not to smile. 

“You’re the baby,” Obito mutters. Kakashi gives him a flat look, trying to convey how much Obito needs to Do Better. He’s been the youngest one in the room since he was five; he could at least make it worth his time. For all his bravado, Obito waits until Rin’s back is turned to stick out his tongue. Like a _child_. Kakashi pointedly raises his eyebrow. 

“Stop fidgeting,” Rin says, even though Kakashi hadn’t been. It gets Obito to flop back down and resume his glaring at the ceiling however, so he keeps his mouth shut. “Just need to check your gate, then we’re done.” All of the medical staff – and Rin in particular – have a habit of narrating their actions as they go. Given the fact that injured shinobi are more likely to act like injured wolves then people, it must be safer; it still makes him feel cornered. He fights not to flinch as she steps into his blind spot, one hand coming to hover just above his ear. Before, he’d almost gotten used to the reduced vision; now it leaves him queasy. The cut is actually pretty small from what he’s been able to see in the mirror, but the bruising around it is deep and ugly through the new fuzz of his hair. They think he’d been hit over the head with something blunt, a rock probably, and the irony of it isn’t lost on him. “Ready?” Rin asks, quiet enough that Obito won’t hear. He breathes deeply, forcing his shoulders to relax. Outside, people flow through the lunch time streets like water over rocks: jumbled and boisterous. If he tried, he could probably pick out Sensei on the way back from the cafeteria. It’s just Rin. He nods. 

He closes his eye and tries to picture Rin: the familiar brownness of her hair and the muted blue of her scrubs. She has a bad habit of letting her eyes drift shut whenever she does delicate chakra work. In front of the bed, Obito is silent for the first time all afternoon and Kakashi hates him a little for it. It’s sunny again today, so the light will be catching the blue undertones of his hair. Rin’s hand finds his own, squeezing gently, and then her chakra’s in his head. It feels like cold water being poured down his spine, every part of him clamoring to run, watercress and ice welling up in the back of his throat. Someone, somewhere is screaming and he thinks it might be him. There’re cuffs at his wrist and he’s not alone. Behind – 

“Kakashi, we’re done.” He blinks his eye open. Rin’s chakra, quickly fading, carries the same smell of chive and oregano it always does and Obito looks like he’s nearly asleep. Watercress and ice. It hadn’t been distinct enough for him to know if it was two chakra signatures or one. Distantly, he makes himself let go of Rin’s hand – she’ll have bruises. 

“Thank you,” he says, lets his eye curve up in a smile that she doesn’t quite look convinced by. He’d been right: they had done something to him. 

“Your gate’s still cracked,” Rin says, moving to pick up his chart. “I’m not an expert, but that’s typical from my understanding. Even you can’t beat biology.” She smiles at him, tucking her pen back into her bun. “Not all bad news though, you’ve stabilized a lot in the past day, and rumor at the watercooler is that they’ll move you out of the ICU later this afternoon.” 

“Yay,” he says, “A different hospital room.” 

“At least Minato-sensei will appreciate a new view,” Obito says, cracking his eyes open. “You know how he gets.” They all pause. None of them like to talk about the time he’d been so late for training they’d had to go drag him out of his study. Kakashi hadn’t gotten the ink out of his mask for weeks. 

“Yay recovery,” Kakashi says, but this time there might (might!) have been some feeling to it. 

\--

Rin’s sources prove correct, and they move him out of the ICU that evening. Better still, Sensei banishes both Rin and Obito from the hospital to “get a good night’s rest for tomorrow’s training” and promptly gets called in for a meeting with the Hokage. Free of visitors and the demon nurse, he wastes zero time clambering out the window and onto the roof. His head aches and the climb leaves his muscles shaky, but hauling himself up and over the eaves settles some small part of him back into his skin. Now if only he could remember. The doctors keep telling him it might come back slowly or not at all. Everyone is carefully avoiding mentioning that not remembering isn’t exactly an option. He makes a fist, watching the fine bones in his hand tremble. A jounin at eleven for this: a nervous tick and a sieve for a brain. Useless. After the bridge, confronted with his father’s legacy, he’d vowed to be better. How very Hatake of him to fail so quickly. 

He sighs, lying down against the tiles. The night’s quiet and he lets himself sink into it, closing his eyes. When he was younger, Father used to make up stories for all the smells he could pick out. The smoke was the Hikeshibaba, blowing out signal fires. The cherry blossoms had been stirred by fawns out past their bedtime. He breathes in the Konoha evening: dust of the clay roof tiles, the small bakery across from the hospital, lingering disinfectant, and the buzz of chakra that always clings to hidden villages. When Sensei joins him he’s halfheartedly trying to figure out the flavors the nearest dango shop sells, but it’s been too long and he’s too lazy to get closer. Sensei smells of sesame, ink, and something… bitter? 

“Jiraiya-sama’s in Konoha?” He’s almost certain it’s toad oil – and it’s too faint for it to have been from Sensei summoning them himself. It’s surprising; Kakashi hasn’t seen Jiraiya more than three times since Father’s funeral, and none of them were occasions he particularly cared to remember. Legendary Sannin he may be, but the man had a twisted sense of humor and very little subtlety. 

“Maybe,” Sensei says, his grin flashing in the dim light. Father had a keener nose than Kakashi – or maybe just greater experience – so they’d played this game anywhere and everywhere; this version is only ever about Sensei’s day. Kakashi’s constructed – sometimes blatantly fabricated – more hours of Sensei’s life than he can count. There’s no grief in it anymore. 

“Toad oil. You hardly ever summon the toads when you’re in Konoha, and the scent’s too faint for it to have been direct contact. Jiraiya always stinks of it.” Father used to tease him about it too, a long time ago. “You found him ‘writing’ and ink got spilled on you when he got caught.” He takes a deep breath: there’s a lingering sweetness, the crisp smell of Kushina’s shampoo, and the stench of hospital. “Sensei,” he says, pieces falling into place, “I’m telling Rin you’re eating jian dui for dinner again.” 

“Not if you want this rooftop adventure to remain covert.” They lock eyes for a minute; there’s no give there. He looks away first and Sensei laughs. “Two out of three’s not bad.” He pats his thigh pouch and there’s the soft clack of scrolls rather than metal. “Mission notes – Sensei distracted me before I could finish.” It takes more effort than it should to keep the frustration off of his face. Scrolls should have been obvious. 

“It’s failing,” he says, bland, and pushes up to balance on his hands, legs held straight over the edge of the roof. He holds it until his shoulders shake and he can feel every individual stitch left in his abdomen. Sensei knocks his knee into Kakashi’s elbow just before he begins using chakra to make up for lack of strength; his arm buckles. Falling the couple of inches to the roof doesn’t hurt, but it stings: salt in the wound. 

“You’re healing,” Sensei says, “It takes time.”

“It’s sloppy.” The bridge forced him to exchange one blind spot for another. He won’t accept a second one. For a moment, he considers letting himself slide off the edge just to prove he could stick the landing, that he’s still here, somewhere, underneath the memory loss and a body that doesn’t feel like his own. They had been in his _head_. Maybe, in the wind and the percussion of his feet hitting the earth, he’d find that he still was. Then again, a part of him drily points out, maybe all he would find is ripped stitches and an even worse headache. Besides, Sensei would catch him first, and his dignity doesn’t need any more beatings. He sighs, slumping back down onto the tile. 

“Thought better of it?” Sensei asks. Kakashi glares at him, but all he gets is an amused smirk in return. You once shoved your hand in a fire to prove you could, his face seems to say, like Kakashi hadn’t been _five_ at the time. Genin were supposed to be stupid – that was the whole point. He stares upward and doesn’t respond. The silence slowly fades into something less pointed and more companionable. Eventually, Sensei sighs and straightens. 

“You need to make peace with it, Kakashi. Because tomorrow they’re going to string you out and take whatever there is to find,” he says and here is Namikaze Minato, jounin captain and Yellow Flash of Konoha. The man in question shares very little in demeanor with the man that has thrown Kakashi into ponds, smudged his nose with ink while reading, and holds his sake worse than a teenager drinking for the first time. “You have to let them,” he says, deflating until he’s just Sensei again, too fond of his students by half. He reaches out like he’s going to ruffle Kakashi’s hair before he remembers and his hand settles on his shoulder instead. Kakashi leans into it. Tomorrow then. Even the Yellow Flash didn’t have infinite favors, and certainly not for the White Fang’s son. He just hopes he hadn’t paid more than Kakashi was worth. 

“That’s what the training is for,” he says. Sensei has the grace to look guilty. 

“I’m not sure who’s going to be more upset.” Before, Kakashi would have said Obito wouldn’t have cared. Kami, had he really been so oblivious only three months ago? 

“Rin probably won’t be mad _at_ you,” he says. Sensei chuckles. 

“Small favors,” he says, shaking his head ruefully. “Sometimes they’re all we get. But I think it’s bedtime.” Kakashi’s body – the betrayer that it is – takes that as its cue to yawn. Sensei stands. Kakashi’s shoulder is cold in the sudden absence of his palm, but he hauls himself upright. 

“Should we hold the door for my shadow?” he asks, only a little petulant, as he lets Sensei herd him towards the stairwell. His own ANBU watchdog is flattering, for all that it grates. 

“Shadows,” Sensei says, and Kakashi can’t tell if he says it because it’s true or because it makes Kakashi’s scowl deepen. Probably both, but even his pride will admit he’s not good enough (yet) to catch the ANBU if they don’t want to be found. 

“Should have jumped off the roof,” he mutters, and doesn’t prop the door behind him. They could damn well work for their paycheck. Ahead of him, Sensei laughs. 

\--

The morning dawns weak and grey outside of his hospital window. Sensei’s asleep in his chair, head tilted back against the wall and feet propped on the edge of Kakashi’s bed. He’s abandoned his sandals and there’s a shallow scrape running the length of his arch. For the most part he’d assumed his presence was an expression of latent worry or an effort to contain the damage Kakashi could cause if this had turned into a betrayal. Now, he wonders if it wasn’t for his own protection – an assurance that promises would be kept. Asleep, Sensei looks drawn. There’s none of his characteristic enthusiasm to make up for the weight he’s lost or the sleep he’s missed. He looks at his own arm, skinny against the blankets; they are all stretched thin. 

Sensei blinks awake just after the sunlight slides its first fingers over the windowsill. He makes a show of it: arching to crack his back and yawning broadly. Despite the appeal of it, Kakashi refrains from rolling his eye. 

“Can you tell me anything?” he asks and instantly wishes he could take it back. It mattered little and good shinobi adapt. Sensei stiffens and uncurls vertebra by vertebra, his face neutral by the time he meets Kakashi’s gaze. 

“No,” he says softly, “You just have to let it happen.” Kakashi nods, sharp, and Sensei’s face goes distant and sad. “I’ll get breakfast,” he says, standing up. He’s still not wearing sandals. He’s _running away_. 

“I’m a weapon,” he says, when Sensei’s almost at the door. Not a boy and certainly not a child. Kakashi’s not sure he was ever either one. Sensei pauses and he can see the silent sigh as it ripples through his shoulders. He hates it. This is the life he chose, and he’s seen the truth of that choice more than ninja three times his age. There’s no _tragedy_ here. 

“One day,” Sensei says, words heavy like a blessing (like a curse), “You’ll find that you’re both: a weapon and a man.”

“I am the Leaf,” he spits. His hands are shaking; he balls them into fists. The beginning and ending of every ninja’s life is right there in the oath they swear. His mistake, before, had been thinking the words meant more than the spirit of them. He presses his knuckles against his thigh where he knows there’s the dull pink line of a new scar. His body, his life, is all he’d had to pledge and he doesn’t regret it. 

“Yes.” But the way he says it doesn’t sound like they’re agreeing and he’s gone before Kakashi can say anything more. 

He tosses back his blankets, half intending to climb out the window, but he catches sight of his reflection in the glass instead. Even with his mask, the face isn’t one that feels like his own. There’s a thick bandage over his left eye that the rest of his face – pinched and hollowed – can’t balance. They’d had to shave part of his head during the surgery, and he’d made them finish the job when he woke up. Now, there was a fine grey fuzz coating his scalp, but somehow it only makes the bruising and the stitches stand out more. 

Kakashi has always been slim, but now he’s practically skeletal. One of the doctors had clucked over him, pointedly talking about weight gain like it was _Kakashi’s_ fault that he hadn’t better prepared for a starvation diet. He knows he didn’t have twenty pounds to spare, but he hadn’t exactly anticipated losing them. There’s no memory of it, but based on his loss of muscle mass alone, he doubts they bothered to feed him more than once or twice. He sighs, turning away from the window, and sinks into the opening stance of a kata. 

Sensei – for years – has been arguing that if he’s going to take his frustration out through exercise he could at least stick to forms well within his ability to prevent injury; he doesn’t see a reason to start listening now. Halfway through he’s panting, his thighs unsteady enough he’s more worried about falling than angry. He swipes the sweat out of his eyes and segues into a kata he hasn’t done since his father was alive to walk him through it. There’re no dogs running through his feet or wind blowing his hair into his eyes, but it’s still embarrassingly challenging. The next month is going to be awful. He hates retraining and that’s without holes in his memory and the pressing knowledge that whatever they did to him is likely permanent. Not that he even knows what they did… 

“Kakashi!” He breathes in, shifting back into Chudan before straightening entirely. 

“Rin-chan,” he says, bland, and glares at Sensei. He shrugs, blue eyes bright with amusement. Clearly this is payback for earlier. 

“Kami, why are you all so stubborn. Get back in bed,” she says, setting down the breakfast tray with entirely more force than necessary. The miso soup sloshes ominously but doesn’t spill. He gets back in bed. She mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “blockheaded idiots” and glares at him until he picks up his chopsticks. The first time he’d eaten, he’d puked it all back up almost immediately, and the attending doctor had given him a very stern talking to about eating at a “normal” pace. Apparently post-starvation meals require more delicacy than speed. Rin and Sensei politely look away when he pulls his mask down, chattering on about something Kakashi can’t be bothered to follow. 

Obito complains about hospital food whenever he’s forced to eat it, which is more of a compliment to his mother than an insult to the hospital. There’s fish and rice alongside the soup, all of it room temperature and lightly seasoned in deference to his “delicate” stomach. He eats it methodically and considers the odds that he’ll be seeing it again sooner than he’d like. They fall somewhere between highly probable and guaranteed. He should’ve summoned the pack – at least then he could have snuck the food to them instead. It’s too late now, so he stacks the dishes neatly and pulls his mask back up. 

“Thank you,” he says, interrupting what appears to be a discussion of… green tea, which neither Rin nor Sensei really drink. The longer he’s awake the more probable he thinks it is that his whole team’s gone crazy in his absence. And he’s such a bastion of good mental processes these days. 

“You’re welcome,” Sensei says. 

“You want to start with your leg and work up? Or head and work down?” 

“Leg,” he says, and leans back to slide down the loose pants they’d finally ( _finally_ ) allowed him to have. The knife wound starts mid-thigh and stops maybe ten centimeters shy of his knee. Five days of healing sessions have left most of it as a thick scab, and Rin hums over it approvingly. 

“It’s looking good, although you shouldn’t be throwing yourself into katas.” She jabs at the bulge of his quad and he sucks in a breath through the pain. Definitely a muscle knot. “You didn’t start with the easy ones,” she says, “and let that be a lesson.”

“Maaa,” he says, “First do no harm, no?” She rolls her eyes. 

“Just lose the shirt, idiot.” Sometimes the better part of valor is knowing when to retreat; he pulls off his shirt. She unwinds the bandages around his abdomen and frowns at his stitches, probing the skin around them gently. “Kakashi…” 

“What?” She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

“It’s a miracle you’ve survived this long,” she says. “Try to keep your exercise to a minimum and refrain from exercising past the point of pain.” She glares at him. “ _Any_ pain.” He opens his mouth, but she holds up a hand. “Don’t – you have more inflammation than you could have developed in the twenty minutes Sensei left you, and I know you’re not going to follow through on anything you tell me now. Just - You can’t actually beat your body back into shape, Kakashi; you have to let it rest.” She puts more ointment on the cut, and then re-bandages it. He catches Sensei’s eyes, but he just tilts his head. They did sort of deserve it. 

The silence settles over them – Rin meticulously working her way through his various wounds. She’s just started on the stitches down the right side of his scalp when Sensei straightens. It’s subtle, but his shoulders pull back and he shifts his weight to balance evenly on his feet. Kakashi catches his eye and knows in the pit of his stomach that his time’s up. He swallows. 

“I’m thirsty,” he makes himself say, flexing his hands against the blankets. 

“I wonder why,” Rin says, clearly not going to let the forbidden katas go. “Sensei, could you?”

“I wanted to have a word with Kakashi, actually, if you don’t mind.” She looks up then, eyeing the two of them. 

“Minato-sensei?”

“Please,” Kakashi cuts in, catching her wrist. The worry in her eyes is almost palpable, but he makes himself hold her gaze, wills her to understand. She nods, slowly. 

“Fine,” she says, grabbing the pitcher off his side table. “But I’m not your servant. Next time just ask.” There’s a beat of silence after the door shuts behind her. Kakashi stares at his hands and can feel Sensei staring at him. The worst has already passed. One more person in his head won’t kill him. He inhales slowly, and forces himself steady on the exhale. 

“I want to remember,” he says, looking up. They both know this is unlikely to help, but they’re shinobi – weirder things have happened. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Sensei says, stepping towards him, but Kakashi shakes his head. 

“We’re at war,” he says, “I won’t be a liability.” He slides his pants back up, knuckles pressing against his scar. He can’t be. Sensei tips his chin up, forcing him to meet his eyes. 

“We’ll find a place to get ramen after, Hatake Kakashi, brother of the Leaf,” he says, fierce, and Kakashi knows he means _I’ll find you_. He ghosts his hand over the top of Kakashi’s head and steps back as the ANBU push through the door. There’re three of them and he wonders, inanely, which one had to talk to the nursing desk about this. 

“Hatake Kakashi?” the one in the boar’s mask says, like they don’t already know how this is going to go. So full of drama, the ANBU. 

“Go find Rin, Sensei,” he says, and stands. He nods to the ANBU. 

“By order of the Third Hokage you’re to come with us,” Boar says, “Any disobedience will be seen as treason.” 

“I’m ready,” he says, and the one in the tiger mask steps up to grab his forearm. 

“Oh I doubt that, little crow,” the woman says, dark laughter lurking in her tone. “But we’ll see.” 

There’s a tug at Kakashi’s center of gravity. Then, between one heartbeat and another, they’re gone, only a wisp of smoke left behind them.


	3. Uchiha Obito

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i still can't believe this is the longest continuous thing i've ever written

Obito’s always been an early riser; he likes the dim light of dawn and how the mist softens the Uchiha compound into something out of a dream. Best of all, he loves kneeling to the soft dark earth of the garden: dew clinging to the plants, his mother serene as she picks wasabi and ginger and peppers, and the sounds of his father puttering about the kitchen. It calms the part of him that worries he’ll never be anything more than a mediocre chunin. His hands can work small feats, can coax life from the soil. It’s something not everyone can do. 

He works his way through the beds, pulling weeds up from the root and dead heading the mums. The stakes for the tomatoes had blown over in the storm last night, and he’s lets himself get lost in the task of detangling them. Kakashi’s been quiet for the last day; Sensei’s scheduled training; and the aunties at the station keep giving him pitying glances when they think he’s not looking. Something’s coming, but for now there’re just the fuzzy green leaves that drop water onto his arms and the stickiness of the occasional spider web. He rights the last of the bamboo and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. Suck on that nature. 

“Musuko!” He blinks, and looks up at his father. The sun has come up without him noticing and he squints into it. “You’ll be late.”

“What?”

“Your cousins,” his father says, lips twitching like he wants to grin. “You told your aunts you’d walk them.” 

“Shit,” he says, straightening up. When had he done that? He really needs to learn to avoid his extended family when he is tired – he has a habit of granting favors to escape faster and they all know it. Bet no one thought of that when they came up with clan compounds. 

“Language,” mother says mildly and he stops to press a kiss to her cheek. 

“Sorry,” he says, “Have a good day, okasan.” He grabs the rice cake his father holds out to him and his goggles from where he’d left them on the porch. 

“You have mud on your forehead,” his mother calls, and her laugh sounds like chimes as he ducks out of the gate. He jogs down the path that leads to the main road of the compound, dodging the branch that’s just short enough to catch him in the head if he’s not careful. It’s not until he hits the road again, scrubbing at the dirt on his skin, that he realizes he has no idea which cousins he’s supposed to be taking. Fuck. He cheats this time, pushing chakra to his feet and churning up dirt. His mother looks up in surprise when he jumps the fence. 

“Musuko?” He scrubs the back of his neck, laughing a little. 

“Uhm, who exactly am I taking?” She sighs, shaking her head and he can hear his dad laughing from the house. He grins at her hopefully. “It’s been a long week?” Her face softens.

“Aunt Noriko’s girls,” she says. “You’re lucky I was talking with her yesterday.” Noriko is actually his third cousin-in-law once removed on his mother’s side… or something like that. Obito is so stupidly grateful that he’s not a part of the part of the clan that has to keep track of that nonsense. 

“Thank you,” he says, and is back over the fence before she can scold him for jumping it in the first place. People are starting to trickle out of their houses and he gets some glares as he weaves around kids and dogs and bikes. Given the Uchiha... everything, no one yells, but it’s inevitable that his parents will know how insufferably rude he is by midmorning. He grins, pushing himself faster for the sheer joy of it. 

Noriko and Sana live on the south side of the compound in a small house tucked behind a massive ginkgo tree. Riku, just starting to walk on his own, is toddling around beneath it under the watchful eye of his mother when Obito skids to a stop, breathing hard. 

“Obito-kun,” Sana says, one eyebrow creeping up her forehead. Riku looks up from his leaf and babbles, breaking into a smile. 

“Good morning, Oba-san - and ototo-chan!” He scoops Riku up and tosses him into the air, much to his delight. “Have you missed me, hmm?” he asks when he’s caught him. He gets a sticky fist against his cheek for his trouble and a string of happy vowel sounds. “Ahhh, you’ve been busy with your sisters, huh.” The front door slides open, but he keeps his focus on Riku. “Oh you’ve been keeping them out of mischief? What a good brother you are – everyone knows girls are trouble.”

“Obito-nii-san!” Hana exclaims, giving up on her sneak attack in favor of running into Obito’s legs. “I am not trouble!” She’s sixteen kilograms of mayhem with pigtails and puppy dog eyes is what she is, but there’s no point in telling a four year old that. 

“Hana-chan!” He says, looking down at her with surprise. “I didn’t see you – have you been eavesdropping on your brother and me?” That stumps her for a minute, a tiny crease forming between her eyebrows and her lip jutting out. 

“You were loooooooud,” she says, finally. “You should whisper next time.” He laughs, letting Riku down when he starts to squirm. 

“That’s good advice, Hana-chan,” he says, “You must be doing very well at the academy.”

“Sensei told Haha I am,” she says, grinning. “She said I’m per-is-tant.” 

“Persistent,” Sana corrects and Obito tweaks one of Hana’s pigtails. “Go get your sister, Hana, or you’ll be late.” Obito watches her careen, already yelling, back into the house and offers a prayer that the kami let this be, that his cousins don’t learn what it means to lose for many years yet. “You look well, Obito-kun.” He blinks, and realizes that Sana’s stood to collect Riku, the boy playing with the ends of his mother’s hair. 

“I –,” he says and realizes that he’s happier than he has been in a long time. Maybe it should feel like they’ve used up all their luck, but instead it just feels like they’re going to make it. “The weather’s been really good this week,” he mumbles, and looks away. He can feel the flush working its way up his face. Stupid Uchiha paleness.

“I’m glad your teammate is well,” Sana says after a moment, blithely moving past what he’s said to what he means in the same way most Uchiha women do. He’s still trying to come up with a reply when Hana drags Hatsuko outside and then, blessedly, it’s time to leave. Classic Obito – saved by the bell a moment too late. 

\--

He realizes he forgot the list for the market after he’s dropped the girls off at the academy, so he’s stuck walking back home first. The last time he’d gone to the market without a list, he came home with three onions, black tea, and a chicken… still alive; he doesn’t always learn from his mistakes the first time, but that one had stuck with him. Of course his way home goes right by the market and he’d run into Kura-obaasan, who had needed help with her own groceries. That had taken him to the other side of Konoha, where he’d run into one of the new genin teams trying to catch The Goddamn Cat. It had only been right for him to dispense some friendly advice (and some catnip). Long story short, he doesn’t make it home until nearly eleven and toes off his sandals to find his father feeding Rin and Sensei dumplings. 

“I’m not late,” he says, because he swears to kami his mother doesn’t even have to be home to know when he’s “neglecting” a guest. It pays to set the record straight right away. Sensei laughs around his mouthful of dumpling, but the tension doesn’t shake out of his shoulders and Rin only gives him a small smile. 

“We came to see if you wanted to start training early,” Sensei says after he swallows. Obito looks at his father meaningfully, but he only looks pointedly at the empty setting in response. News of Obito’s run this morning had already circled back then. Well, he’d learn of his fate at dinner; no point in worrying about it. 

“Oh,” he sits, picking up his chopsticks. “I haven’t been to the market. Otōsan?”

“It’s not a problem, go train. Mikoto-san told me you are still getting headaches?” Geeze, you mention one thing to one person around here. Shisui needed to learn to keep his mouth shut. Minato frowns at him and he can feel Rin’s glare. He stubbornly takes a bite of his dumpling. 

“It’s normal,” he says, fighting to keep the petulance out of his voice. “You know that Otōsan.” The flat look his father gives him makes it plenty clear he didn’t bring it up because _he_ was unaware. Obito scowls. “It’s a typical side effect of awakening the sharingan, especially when you’re – older. It goes away within a few months.” If he’s had more of them than all his careful probing would indicate is normal, well, they are fighting a war. His family and his team have bigger things to worry about. He isn’t the one that just came back from being a POW. 

“Obito-kun – “ Rin starts, and Obito shoves another dumpling in his mouth. 

“We ‘ould go,” he says, and stands up. He chews twice and swallows rapidly. “Thank you for lunch, Otōsan.” He flees before anyone can say anything else, sliding on his sandals and opening the door before Rin and Sensei have even stood up. A few clouds have rolled in while they were eating, but it doesn’t look like rain. 

“Obito!” Rin says, when she comes outside. “That was so rude.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. 

“What’s wrong with Kakashi?” That pulls her up short, and her face softens. Sensei steps out a moment later and he frowns at both of them. “You’re tense,” he says, pointing at Sensei. “And you didn’t immediately go on about modern medicine,” he adds, turning back to Rin. “Plus, everyone was whispering about Iwa spies downtown earlier.” 

“They took him in for interrogation this morning,” Sensei says into the resulting silence. Oh. Well that’s – oh. Early training makes sense all of the sudden; ninjas have a broad range of stress relief strategies, but they all have one in common. 

“So we’re breaking things, then?” he says, and it startles a laugh out of Rin. 

“Is this just what boys do when you experience emotions?” 

“Hey,” Sensei says mildly, “I learned this jutsu from Kushina.” 

“Mmm,” Rin falls into step between them, “It’s a hothead thing then?” 

“Probably,” Obito says. “Don’t worry, you’ll fit right in.” She socks him in the arm, which really just proves his point, doesn’t it? 

\--

Six hours later, Obito’s covered in woodchips and his knuckles have bled through the bandages Rin had given him at hour two. His right shin is aching from when Sensei – a clear sadist – had decided moving targets would obviously help them master the technique. It had not. He hasn’t managed anything more than breaking a log in half, and Rin’s no better. It had looked so simple when Sensei did it – one strike and the whole log shattering to splinters. There had been some fancy words after, something about using their chakra as an igniter, but Obito had been really caught up in the _log shattering_ bit. Whatever – Sensei’s advice plainly hadn’t helped Rin. He flops down next to her; maybe if he stays very, very still, the world will stop moving. 

“Giving up so soon?” Sensei asks, disgustingly cheerful. 

“Strategic retreat,” Rin mutters, and Obito would hold his hand up for a fist bump if he thought either one of them could move. 

“It looked so easyyyyy,” he says. The crunch of Sensei’s sandals gets closer, and Obito pries his eyes open to glare at him. In retrospect, everything he had told them (that Obito listened to) had been spectacularly unhelpful. “You did that on purpose,” he says, and the returning grin is almost blinding. 

“You look but you do not see,” he says. Obito groans and hears Rin echo his disgust; Sensei laughs. “Come on,” he says, pulling Rin upright before offering a hand to Obito. He takes it gratefully, and lets Sensei do 97% of the work getting him vertical. “You’ll sleep well tonight.” Obito doesn’t realize he’s swaying until Rin wraps her hand around his waist to stabilize him – or maybe she’s stabilizing herself. 

“Could have just drugged us,” Rin says through a yawn. 

“For real,” he says, but Sensei’s already gone. “Typical bastard-sensei,” he says, but he’s too exhausted to work up any real emotion about it. Maybe that is the point. He squints down at the top of Rin’s head, familiar brown hair and a fair amount of dirt. “We’ve got this, one step at a time.” She snorts.

“You have to start walking for that to be convincing.”

“Ah,” he says. It _had_ felt like something was missing. 

“Come on,” she says and takes a stumbling step that he has to follow. They make it to the halfway point between their homes like that – staggering like they’re drunk and struggling with straight lines. Minato had been kind enough to pick a training ground closer to their houses at least. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your headaches,” she says as they part. He makes a face at her. “It’s gotta be related to your chakra coils.”

“I’ll explain them to you later, you nerd,” he says. After he asks Reo to explain it to him again. “You’re more stubborn than Kakashi.”

“Keeps you alive,” she shoots back. It’s hard to argue with that; he grins at her instead. 

It had been so easy to crush on the idea of her, before the bridge, but this sharp-funny-stubborn Rin he’s gotten in the past months is so much better. He’s a little in love with both of them now – with the strange, off kilter, brilliant thing they become together – but he thinks that might just be what having best friends means. The silence where Kakashi’s scoff, his quiet _kept you alive first_ would fit is practically visible and Obito _wants_ it. They’d been a team for a long, mostly agonizing (occasionally spectacular) three years of growing pains – and they’ve only just come out the other side into something that feels solid, feels like his own pulse. He’s not prone to predicting the future – but dammit they’re going to amazing if the world would just _cooperate_. It’s choking, suddenly, this knife point they’re all balanced on. If Kakashi’s (wrongly) found guilty and Obito dies in a jailbreak he’s never going to forgive him. He breathes, shakes his head at Rin’s worried look. 

“Goodnight,” he says and bumps his fist against her shoulder. 

“Goodnight, Obito.”

\--

He sleeps like the dead for nearly twelve hours and wakes up aching but clear headed. The house is quiet around him, both of his parents gone to work, and when he finally shuffles downstairs there’s a note on the rice container: _Minato-san requested you meet him at Ichiraku’s at eleven_. It’s his mother’s handwriting; Sensei must have convinced her not to wake him up. He pauses, looking at the sunlight playing over the counters, and then spins to look at the clock: 10:30. 

Shit.

He’d like to say he runs the whole way there and arrives barely on time. In reality, however, he jogs _maybe_ one block before giving it up as a lost cause when his muscles protest. It’s an offensively bright day outside and he realizes the fourth time he pushes his hair out of his eyes that he’d left his goggles and hitai-ate upstairs. He shakes his head – this was not going to be his best day. The streets are pretty clear at least. It’s too early for people to be heading to lunch and it’s one of those fall days where everything is stupidly hot for no reason. Sweat’s running down his face by the time he passes the laundromat, but at least no one stops him to chat. When he finally rolls up, it’s twenty past eleven and he’s disgustingly sweaty, the beginnings of a headache pressing at his temple.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, ducking through the curtain, “I overslept.” There’s a bag leaning against Minato’s stool, one of Kushina’s ribbons tied around the strap. A weight settles in his stomach – he hadn’t realized it had left. Sensei turns to look at him and one eyebrow creeps up his forehead as he takes him in. 

“You aren’t late…?” he says, voice rising like it’s question. “It’s not 11:30 already is it?” 

“Eleven…” Oh. Obito is going to kill his mother. Or, like, glare at her really strongly; he was still on thin ice from yesterday. “I thought we were meeting at eleven,” he says, slumping onto his normal stool. Ayame is doing a really bad job of hiding her laughter as she puts a glass of water in front of him; he makes a face at her. Sensei laughs – a clear, bright sound – and ruffles his hair. 

“Rin-chan was helping her obaasan this morning. She should be here soon,” he says. “How are you feeling today?” Obito groans, only half theatrically, and pushes his bangs off his forehead. 

“Like bird that flew all of Wind country. It took _forever_ to walk home yesterday.” He shoves at Sensei’s arm, but he just shrugs and smiles. 

“I had things to attend to.” Obito frowns, even if it might be true. One day Sensei will be Hokage and too busy to buy them ramen all the time – he couldn’t be ditching out on them now too. He catches sight of the bag again and his frown deepens. 

“Are you leaving?” He asks, and doesn’t tack on _again_ because he’s not (not not not) a child. It’s a funny thing to watch Minato go from joking team dad to jounin to sensei in the span of a breath. He both folds in and expands out. Obito’s seen Jiraiya-sama do it once before as well, and wonders if he’d taught Sensei or if Minato had learned all on his own. “Kakashi’s not even…” cleared? healing? safe? They’re all a lot of things in negative right now. 

“After lunch,” he says, swirling a chopstick through his noodles. “But it shouldn’t be for long.” He always says that; it’s only sometimes true. Teuchi bustles out from the kitchen, breaking up the resulting silence, to set Obito’s normal seaweed bowl in front of him. 

“Thank you,” he says, and the broth smells so good his smile comes without too much work. 

“I always know,” Teuchi says, rapping the top of his head with the packet of chopsticks. He gives a ghost of a laugh, catching the chopsticks before the chef can get another good whack in. 

“You do! I know, I know,” he says, “I was young and foolish.” 

“You are still young and foolish,” Ayame calls from the kitchen. 

“Hey!” He makes to stand, but subsides under Sensei’s look. “She started it,” he mutters, which is, of course, when Rin decides to show up. This day, seriously. 

“Started what?”

“Obito-kun’s foolish,” Ayame pokes her head out to say loudly over Obito’s, “Nothing!” Rin laughs and collapses into the chair on the other side of Obito. 

“Sensei’s leaving,” he says petulantly, and immediately wishes he could swallow it back down. Rin’s face slides into forced neutrality and both Teuchi and Ayame disappear back into the kitchen. “Sorry,” he says, shoving a bite of ramen into his mouth. 

“What about...”

“Kakashi will be fine, you two,” Sensei says, and Obito can’t tell if he knows something or it’s just his normal optimism. “I just wanted to make sure no one was worse for wear after yesterday.” 

“Would have been better with dinner,” he says around his food and Rin pinches the underside of his arm. He pouts at her. 

“We’re good, Sensei.” They lapse into silence, Minato and Obito eating and Rin building towers out of sauce packets. The rise and fall of Teuchi’s voice in the kitchen is blurred rumble and behind them the streets of Konoha are flooding with the lunch crowd. The rush is worse now than it was before the war – civilians have packed into the village walls even as ninjas have died in droves outside of them. Obito barely remembers to notice the difference anymore. 

“Is there any truth to it?” he asks finally, when the silence is suddenly unbearable. They’d never been this quiet before. “The talk of peace?” Rin’s hand twitches and her tower tumbles to the counter; Sensei finishes his bowl and sets down his chopsticks. 

“There’s always hope for peace, Obito,” he says, as steady and inevitable as the ocean. The ribbon on his bag is bright orange and clashes terribly with his hair as he shoulders it. “Oh!” He digs through his pockets until he emerges with a key. “I forgot to water my plants before I left – would you two mind?” 

“It’s no trouble,” he says, and Sensei smiles at them both. 

“Look after each other. No trouble until I’m back.” He’s gone before Rin’s ramen even comes. Lunch is a subdued affair after Sensei departs despite Ayame’s attempts to cheer them up. He’s more used to waking up to find Minato gone than actually watching him go – so this feels worse somehow. 

“Come on,” Rin says, when the lunch rush has come and gone and both of them have stopped poking at their noodles. “Let’s go water some plants.” 

\--

Kushina and Minato’s apartment is in an older part of town where the first floors of most buildings are still tiny shops. It gives the neighborhood a rambling feel, people always gathered on the sidewalk and carts and boxes and tables forcing them to walk in zigzags. They buy pocky from the little girl and her grandmother on the corner because Obito’s a sucker, but Rin just shakes her head and smiles. 

“Let’s see you do better,” he says as they climb the stairs, and they’re still squabbling about it when Rin jiggles the door open. (It sticks in defiance to grease, men, and kami everywhere.) “Geeze, he left the light on too.” Good thing he’d remembered the plants at least. He flicks the kitchen light off, and moves to open the blinds.

“Don’t,” a haggard voice says suddenly, just as Obito’s fist closes around the fabric. Three things happen in very quick succession: Obito’s heart stutters, then jackrabbits against his ribs; Rin says, “ _Kakashi_ ,” in the same tone she had said Obito’s name when she pulled him from the rubble; Kakashi, grey on grey on grey, sways forward like an apparition that hasn’t quite solidified. Obito lurches two steps towards him to catch his forearms before he collapses; he smells like bleach and mint toothpaste. Time settles back into its normal pace. 

“Kami,” Obito says and Rin slips under Kakashi’s left arm. 

“You idiot,” she says briskly. It’s her medic voice and, like magic, the world suddenly seems a bit more manageable. Obito slides to Kakashi’s right side and they maneuver him back to the bed. “Come on, you need to stop getting so excited about walking. Honestly, it’s not that exciting.” She keeps up a steady monologue as they get him situated and it mostly covers the small hurt sounds Kakashi keeps making. Obito flinches at every one regardless. 

“Easy… for you…to say,” Kakashi says when they’ve gotten him back on the mattress. He sounds hollow, like the substance’s been pulled out of him. Rin collapses onto the mattress next to him, their shoulders brushing. 

“Nonsense,” she says, “Sensei ran us dry yesterday. Walking is overrated.” She cracks one eye open and looks pointedly at Obito. He swallows. 

“Definitely overrated,” he says, gingerly laying down on Kakashi’s other side. They’ve done this plenty of times on winter missions, but Kakashi’s never felt fragile before. His brain keeps getting caught on it every time their forearms bump. Kakashi grunts, but doesn’t say anything. He keeps shifting, tiny little movements like he can’t get comfortable.

“Can I…” The glow of Rin’s chakra is bright in the dim light of the room and Kakashi tenses like a tripwire; the light disappears quicker than it came. “It’s alright,” she says, and Obito feels her move, watches as she presses her hand to Kakashi’s chest. “I won’t. I won’t let anyone.” Obito closes his eyes, starts to hum. It’s a melody from a song his mother used to sing to him and it always makes him think of rain. 

He’s not sure how long they lay there – Obito humming, Rin’s hand rising and falling with Kakashi’s breath, and Kakashi coiled like a spring – but eventually the tension dissipates. Kakashi’s fingers find Obito’s wrist, holding on gently. He falls asleep shortly after, a shudder running through him, and his hand going lax. 

“ _Kami_ ,” he says.

“I know,” Rin whispers back – both of them barely daring to move. 

“Water some plants,” he says, slightly hysterical. “Some damn _plants_.” Rin giggles, high and too fast. 

“I _know_. What the fuck,” she says. “I’m going to kill Sensei.” 

“Not if I get him first,” he says, but he can’t even find the energy to really be mad about it. Sensei probably had a reason; he generally did. Still – _plants_ , really? They lapse back into silence, Kakashi’s breathing steady between them. Obito’s stomach feels hollow but also leaden, his heart beating uncomfortably hard in his chest. This _day_ , seriously. When sleep finds him, he doesn’t bother fighting it. 

\--

He’s not sure, immediately, what wakes him up. It’s night properly now, but there’s a dim light coming in from under the bedroom door; Obito doesn’t remember closing it. He sucks in a deep breath, rolls onto his side, and realizes the middle of the bed is empty. Rin’s breathing is shallow and even across from him, but Kakashi’s gone. He fights down his initial surge of panic and unwraps the sheet from around his legs. Not every situation is the worst possible version of itself. 

The wood floor is cool on his feet and he eases the door open slowly. It doesn’t creak – small mercies – and he slides it shut softly behind him. The light over the stove has been turned on, but it takes Obito a minute to pick out Kakashi on the couch. He’s hunched over on the far side of the couch, forehead resting on his blanketed knees. Obito can hear his breathing – too fast – from across the room.

“Kakashi?” There’s a barely perceptible flinch. “Are you alright?” He creeps closer to the couch, sitting down gingerly when Kakashi doesn’t say anything. Time to buck up, he thinks. “I still wake up feeling like I’m being buried,” he offers, stilted, into the quiet darkness. “Everything tastes like iron and dust and I can hear Rin yelling.” He sighs, sprawling until his knee bumps up against Kakashi’s. He doesn’t press into it, but he doesn’t move away either. “That was just rocks and bad luck and I still can’t sleep under anything more than a sheet. Maybe that’s pathetic.” He rakes a hand through his hair, closing his eyes. “But Kami, Kakashi, you’re allowed to feel whatever the fuck you want about this.” Obito doesn’t even know what the fuck this is, other than torture at the hands of the enemy and followed by torture at the hands of friends. It’s got nothing to do with him and he still wants to vomit. 

“I kept remembering… while you were gone. All the dumb shit you used to do to try to get me to awaken my sharingan. You were a massive dick. But – after everything I think I kind of get it. You wanted us to be strong enough that you could stop worrying.” He talks until his throat goes dry and then some more, sneaking glances to watch Kakashi uncurl inch by inch and his breathing stabilize. After five minutes he stops picking his words like they’re bombs and just… lets it come. He doesn’t think Kakashi’s listening really, not like that. Eventually, Obito feels the cushion dip under his weight and their shoulders slide together. He lets the next words fade out on his tongue. 

“You are pathetic,” Kakashi says, rough, and Obito’s stomach drops out, “but only because you cried at the comic on the cereal box.” He breathes through the sick swoopy feeling in his chest until the relief breaks through and he can laugh. Kami, this jerk. He’s going to cry right now – that’ll show him. 

“Fuck you,” he says, thick. “That dog deserved better.” They all deserve better. The light flicks on suddenly, and there’s Rin: squinting and messy haired in the doorway. Obito does cry then, because they’re all here and alive and basically in one piece. He hadn’t lost his faith in it happening, not exactly, but seeing it is like finally pulling himself from the river. There’s no reason to ration his air anymore. 

“What are you two doing,” Rin mumbles, looking really unconvinced by the prospect of being awake. 

“Feeling,” Kakashi says, because he’s a giant asshole who cracks jokes about his own panic attacks apparently. Rin looks to the ceiling like there might be help coming. Obito’s body decides to sob and laugh at the same time, which just results in this dumb hiccupping sound. Kakashi sweeps out a hand: _see_. No one comments on how badly it’s shaking. 

“Idiots,” she says eventually, yawning. “Are you done then, or should I make tea?” Obito swipes at his eyes, glancing at the loose set of Kakashi’s shoulders. 

“We’re good,” he says, sniffing, and stands up. Sleep is sounding good. He’s almost through the doorway when Kakashi catches his wrist; Obito half turns. 

“Thank you,” Kakashi says, quiet, and Obito can’t help but smile. Rin has turned off the light and it’s too dark to see anything but the moonlight coming in through the window. It catches on the short fuzz of Kakashi’s hair, like someone had dropped stardust over his head. 

“Come _on_ ,” Rin says, when neither of them move, and he laughs and laughs until she throws a pillow at him and Kakashi’s shoving at his back. They wrestle for the blankets and sheets and space until Kakashi grunts when Obito’s elbow winds up in his kidney and they settle. Maybe the world is falling apart. Maybe peace for ninja is only ever a dream. But Obito has his team and stardust and the promise of the morning sun. He presses his grin into his pillow, listening to Rin’s gentle snoring and the slight rattle of Kakashi’s breathing. It’s going to be an uphill battle, but it’s a pretty good dream.


End file.
